Delivery gets better
with Shopping

This project is an addition to an exciting project called Spark delivery. Design leads from Associate Picking and Spark Delivery projects along with a researcher formed the core UX team.

In 2020, when the pandemic took over the world, we started work on a fast-tracked initiative that will Enable 3rd party shoppers to shop and deliver orders from the Walmart stores. This was launched in Mexico followed by the US.

Competition benchmarking

To get a better understanding of the domain, we spent our initial days on competitive analysis. Both US and Mexico were considered. The primary focus was on Shopping, Delivery, and Streamlined checkout.

Merging 2 apps

Over the years, Walmart associates have built a strong Picking app. The goal was to fuse it with our most powerful Last-mile delivery app.

The respective apps were built were to serve specific use cases. The key use cases and the users were different for the problem we were trying to solve. We analyzed and built an app around the limitations but not compromising the user experience. We partnered with Zubale who were specialized in hiring and training independent workers.

Design - Test - Iterate - Repeat

The focus was on the speed of the launch. This will be followed by testing and learning from the feedback. The UX team had very little time to share finalized mocks of all the key flows with the team and provide a walkthrough to the whole team.

We worked closely with the UX researcher creating multiple prototypes and gathering as much feedback as possible. Because of the travel restrictions we had, all the studies were done on usertesting.com. Initial studies were done with users from the US as that will drastically reduce the time translating the content. After the 4th user study with over 50 participants taking part, we were confident to share the mocks with the broader team.

Shopping list

Shopping Instructions: Created the right set of information that most of the shoppers would like to know before they start picking items. This drastically improved productivity and trust towards the product.

Shopping List: This gives an overview of all the products that have to be picked. The items are also sorted in the way that will be picked.

Pick Items

This was the most important screen during picking. The right balance had to be got to ensure the shopper has all the key details and also. All the details were broken too for ease of understanding

Clicking on the Scan barcode will open the camera that will let the shoppers scan the item bar code.

Substitution

The picking app had a powerful Substitution system that instantly suggests a substitute if an item is not on the shelf which was a big advantage Spark had over competitors. Multiple use-cases will come up and we made sure all the use-cases are looked into retaining the simplicity of the app.

Review

It's pretty common for Shoppers in Mexico to call the customer. The key reasons for them to call after shopping is complete are

1. Review substitutions
2. Inform about items that are not available 
3. Add new items

Spanish Translation

Language is an important part of any product. Instead of doing a direct translation of the content, we engaged with the Language Quality Assurance (LQA) team who not only translated the content but also ensured it sounded accurate to the local market.

Launching
Remotely

With the Pandemic that had forced us to work from home. On August 20, 2020 product was launched at a store in Mexico City. The product went from discovery to launch in under 4 months with the whole team working remotely.

The Ops team in Mexico was sharing live feed from the store since traveling to Mexico was not a possibility.
 

Expanding to
the US market

Once the Mexico operations were going on smoothly, the leadership was confident to introduce this to the US market. We used the learnings from the Mexico market and enhanced it for the US market and was called 'Spark Shopper. We launched Spark Shopper in Nashville on 7th June 2021.

Impact

Spark Shopper is currently live in 2 Countries. We are monitoring the metrics. The numbers speak for themselves. We have also received positive responses from the users on the initiative and suggestions to make this even powerful.

Icing on the cake

While we are very proud of the team who delivered this product with positive feedback, we were invited to present to the Leadership team which also included Doug McMillon. I am glad that UX had a seat at the table and I got a chance to represent the UX team to talk about how we were an important cog in the wheel to build this powerful product.